Written by Kirk Fitzpatrick

Kirk Fitzpatrick is an Associate Editor of VoegelinView, Associate Professor of Philosophy, and former Director of the Grace A. Tanner Center at Southern Utah University (2012-16). He is author of A Philosophical Reader on Moral Weakness: Akrasia, Weakness of Will, and Practical Irrationality (Linus, 2009).

In Plato’s Mythoi, the Political Soul’s Drama Beyond, Donald H. Roy aims to place Plato’s use of mythoi in the context of his dialogues as a whole. He challenges the philosophical interpretation of Plato’s myths from interpreters such as Bambrough and Vlastos, rejecting their interpretations as…

Socrates describes the “Ideal City” early in Bk. II of the Republic. Glaucon is not satisfied with the constitution. He says that “you make the people feast without delicacies” (372c).[1] Socrates adds some delicacies, but Glaucon challenges the Ideal City on the same grounds. It is too austere. He says, you have founded a “city for pigs” (372d). Socrates responds…

IIn the Republic, Socrates holds that there are correlations among the poetic rhythms and the constitutions of state and soul. He does not explicitly tell us what the correlations are. So it is challenging to determine which rhythms correlate with which constitutions. The goal of the paper is to determine, as best the evidence allows, which poetic rhythms correlate with…

IIn the Republic, Socrates names the musical modes and he correlates them with the different constitutions of state and soul (399a–c).[1] Since Socrates ranks the different constitutions (580a) and he correlates them with his categories of modes (398e–399d), he ranks his categories of musical modes. Glaucon gives the relations between the Socratic categories of modes and the modes as they…

Our systems are at the breaking point now. We need more roads, more hospitals, more schools, more nurses, more teachers, more police, more fire, more water, more energy, more ports . . . more, more, more. [1]ISocrates apparently maintains a contradiction in his discussion of the democratic constitution in the state and soul. At times he describes democracy as a…